20160725

Goals... How SMART

While organizing my files earlier today, I
revisited these goals which I set for myself two and half years ago:

Make a difference

Travel

Learn

Get out of employment

Make enough money to get by

Drawn up in early January in 2014, these
were meant to be some sort of new year resolutions. In examining them today,
the following observations can be made:

As is the case for most new year
resolutions, they failed to serve any purpose as they were soon forgotten. For
plans to have an impact, they have to be implemented and the progress and
effectiveness of the implementation evaluated.

Most of them do not serve well as goals.
They did give some general ideas of the things I have always wanted to do, but their
inadequacy becomes obvious when assessed against the criteria of SMART goals
(Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Result-focused, Time-bound).

Such shortcomings notwithstanding, I would
like to think that those are the broad directions I have been following between
then and now, and what is most gratifying is that I can proudly check the box
for the item ‘get out of employment’, which obviously is the outcome of my
conviction that I have ‘[made] enough money to get by’.

There is, of course, no room for
complacency. Now that I am entirely responsible for the way I live my life and
no longer have the excuse that I am so busy with my job that I have no time for
anything else, goals have a vital role to play for giving direction and driving
achievement. Setting some SMART goals is, therefore, an urgent task.